I should have known someone would try to hijack the thread, seems to happen too often on here.

Paranoidsam, I am sorry if you or others feel I have hijacked the thread. I assure you I had no intention of doing so whatever that means (to hijack a thread). In my view I was asked by others to explain things and challenged to prove things I had posted. Sure, my responses to those requests may be construed as going off topic. But they were only honest and forthright responses to questions asked or claims made that were not true. I think the topic is a good one and I hope you all keep discussing it. My views of how monotheism came about are not really much different than anyone elses and I appreciate your thoughtful approach to the subject. I hope you can appreciate that anything I post in forthright response to others is obviously going to be frowned upon by some simply because I am not an atheist and I challenge all the unsubstantiated assertions that I notice (which are many). Some people just take it personally.

No. It was derailed because YOU (first) asserted something that was false. (You lied). You made a claim that was delusional, and 100 % non-factual. You said you had proven something and that people had agreed to something that :
1. you had, in no way, proven,
2. no one, except YOU agreed to.

You define words for your private personal dictionary-linguistic system, and expect the world to agree with you. That is delusional. You are delusional. Go away. The sooner the better. You have nothing to offer TTA. Buh bye.

Back to the thread.

Insufferable know-it-all. God has a plan for us. Please stop screwing it up with your prayers.

I think there are two reasons behind the rise of monotheism as opposed to polytheism, one being the difficulty in assuming to know and attempting to enforce often opposing wills of many different gods, and the other is the big bang theory.

Both poly and mono theism are good sources of lore and morality but polytheism with its roots in tribal culture and the earlier religious variations(longest lived of present day) does a great job of 'explaining' the pre-science world, laying out a few cautionary tales, etc. but it does not do as good a job when it comes to influencing the actions of a populace in a direct manner, there are too many people and gods vying for power, the gods are mischievous, etc. As the Roman Empire expanded it needed a better way to exert control over it's people over great distances, they wanted to be unquestioned in their authority, and that is why polytheism looses favor in the west I think. The same occurred in Egypt when Akhenaten in a bid to shore up his power moved the capitol city and declared himself the earthly form of Akin the one true god.

The other reason I feel that monotheism will win out is that it is superior in terms of plausibility (not that it is all that plausible at all, just more so than polytheism), it's become increasingly hard to hide one god in the gaps none the less a plethora of deities. The big bang leads to a cosmic dead end where a creator might hide but having gods of thunder and fire and hunting what room is there for that in the post renaissance world?

...Of course one might claim that Catholicism is actually polytheism and turn this whole thing on it's head.

I thought this was a well thought out post. An ultimate Truth is clearly more plausible than many ultimate Truths.